Effective Sales Development with David Dulany of Tenbound

David Dulany is the Founder and CEO of Tenbound, a research and advisory firm focused and dedicated to sales development, performance, and improvement. They provide cutting edge research, high-quality events, consulting, training, and coaching for all levels of the sales development team.

David also provides sales training to salespeople, and his company’s tagline is, “More Appointments, More Pipelines, More Sales.”

How David got into the conference business and what people should expect in his conferences

David discloses how the lowest point in his career opened new doors for him

In this episode…

When you want to make a sale, it’s vital to uncover the pain points of your prospective client and then use this to showcase how your product or service can make things better for them. According to David Dulany of Tenbound, this is the fundamental principle of sale that people need to be aware of but the only way for you to find out what these pain points are is to have a relationship with your client.

The question now is, how do you cultivate a professional yet trusting relationship with your clients and how can you encourage your sales development representatives to build and care for these relationships?

In this episode of InspiredInsider, Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks to David Dulany about the lack of the SDR layer in the sales pipeline of many companies and how it’s affecting them, the importance of initiating and cultivating relationships with prospective clients, and the things people should take into high regard when hiring someone for their sales development team. Stay tuned.

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The most important piece that most are missing is the right strategy and we make sure our clients get ROI so it becomes one of the most valuable parts of your strategic partnerships.

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Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz 0:15
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders, like the founders, you’ve heard of some you’ve never heard of the founder of p90x. Tony Horton. I like hearing you know, David the challenge stories. You know, he made money as a street before selling hundreds of millions of dollars. So he put his head on the street, do a street mind thing, and that’s how he made food in and rent money. Baby Einstein founder Julie Clark talks about growing her company to $20 million dollars with five employees selling it to Disney. But she’d beat cancer twice and that was you know, really tough and how Did that Atari founder Nolan Bushnell talks about when he was Steve Jobs? his mentor, Steve offered him 33% of Apple for $50,000. And why he actually said no to that. So it’s crazy stuff. And we’ll hear David’s story today. This episode is brought to you by Rise25, which I co-founded with a business partner, John Corcoran. We help b2b businesses connect to their dream 100 clients and referral partners. And we do that by helping you run your podcast so generates ROI. David has a podcast which every, In my opinion, every business should have a podcast Um, and I was actually inspired to start podcasting by my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor and he and his brother were caught in concentration camps and we’re the only in Nazi Germany we’re the only people that survived and the Holocaust mutation actually did an interview with my grandfather, and he’s not alive anymore but his legacy lives on inspired insider.com on the My about page, you can watch I watch him multiple times a year, it really makes me have a lot of gratitude and appreciation for life and what I have. But so podcasting, yes will help your business but it also helps you and your guests leave a legacy of knowledge beyond ourselves. So as I do credit, the single best thing I’ve done for my business in my life outside of my wife, if you have questions about podcasting, you know, email us support at Rise25Media.com or go to Rise25.com and learn more. Some of our clients include a Berkshire Hathaway company, a Harvard alumni group, SAS companies. And so I’m gonna introduce today’s guest, David and he could tell the benefits of podcasting because he has one you should check his out also, I’ve listened to it. It’s really good I mean, I was listening to one this morning, David of the guests you had on, got fired from McDonald’s. Yeah, you know, I’m talking about and actually went on to found a company before High School. For high school or college, sold it for me, sold it for multiple seven figures and then founded another company and amazing story. So today let me properly introduce you. David David Delaney is founder and CEO of 10 bound and 10 bonus if you haven’t heard of it, definitely check it out. It’s T and not the number time a tn bound calm. It’s a research and advisory firm focused and dedicated 100% to sales development, performance and improvement. I mean, I always pictured the lifeblood of a company is sales like how do you solve a problem when it comes to more sales? Maybe not true, but salespeople definitely that’s they you know, default to that. I love their tagline more appointments, more pipeline, more sales, and 10 bound provides cutting edge research, high-quality events, consulting, training, coaching for all levels of sales development team and, and David I don’t know if it’s tough you’ll tell me a little bit If this is tough or not, but he sold, training, sales training to salespeople, okay? He’s someone you want on your side also because he’s an Eagle Scout, so he’s probably prepared for every possible situation. David, thanks for joining me.

David Dulany 4:16
Hey, thank you. I’m honored and blast. There are so many things I want to talk to you about after that intro. But, yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Start with

Jeremy Weisz 4:26
selling sales training to salespeople. Okay. Because you before you started your own company, you worked. You know, you’ve started help people start sales teams at Glassdoor. And you’ve worked, you know, in Achieve Global which is acquired by Miller Heiman group. So start by when you know when you were selling sales training, salespeople talk about those days for a second.

David Dulany 4:53
Yeah, absolutely. So there was a company called the chief global like you said it says was acquired. And they took over the training curriculum from Xerox, which is going way back. We’re in the Wayback Machine. But Xerox had been known as the best in-house training program, you know, in the technology space for years. And eventually, they spun out this process to a private company. And I was lucky enough, I literally kind of stumbled into sales, as many of us do, and was lucky enough to get in this company where we could actually take the sales training that we were selling we had to in order to be able to talk about it,

Jeremy Weisz 5:43
You think? Yeah, exactly.

David Dulany 5:45
Right. And so, you know, I got a great sales education. And, yeah, I mean, the prospects and the customers were tough. I mean, selling to salespeople is tough because they’re focused on making their own number. They don’t want to deal with anybody that’s not completely adding value quickly to what they’re doing. Right. So it was trial by fire for sure.

Jeremy Weisz 6:10
I could see both sides, I could see it being harder, but also easier they already bought in, they already know the value of it. What did you find when you were on those calls? Or in front of people?

David Dulany 6:21
Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing is that you have to walk the talk and, and be living, breathing demonstration of the sales training that you’re actually selling. And so that’s tricky, because, you know, you are the actual product to some extent, if you’re selling sales training, so they want to know that you prospect correctly, that you’re engaging them correctly, you’re doing your deep dive, you’re getting the information that you need in order to make a solution. And if you miss a step or something goes wrong, then, you know, obviously, your training doesn’t work. So I’ll see you later. So I remember, you know, There was I worked there for about seven years and there was a lot of learning experiences and just having to demonstrate where you’re actually selling.

Jeremy Weisz 7:08
You know, what were some of the big nuggets takeaways, you remember from that sales training that maybe you still use or maybe still teach, but that definitely helped you in that position itself.

David Dulany 7:19
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting because it’s kind of like, you know, if you listen to a modern-day, you know, Guru a lot of the stuff that they’re getting is like 2500 years old, you know, that they picked up

Jeremy Weisz 7:34
or I used to listen in my car audio cassette tapes of Zig Ziglar Jim Rohn Denis Waitley. All Tony Robbins, all those people. I know that you’re a fan of Jim Rohn among other time, yeah,

David Dulany 7:48
big time and, you know, he got all of this stuff from the stoics and, you know, they got all their stuff from somebody else. So the reason I bring that up is, you know, as I have moved through my career. It’s been over 10 years now since I was selling sales training, or more that actually, you know, you see the same fundamentals come up in the new latest gizmos and gadgets and services and stuff like that. You just start to see patterns, it probably has something to do with just getting old.

David Dulany 8:25
you start seeing patterns. And so it’s kind of like, Oh, you know, there’s, there’s new packaging, and there are new ways to present ideas, but it’s a lot of it goes back to those fundamentals. And so, you know, just being able to learn the fundamentals at an early part of your career has been super beneficial. What do you consider some of the fundamentals are the fundamentals. I mean, you know, if somebody has a pain that you can potentially solve, you’re going to have a way better time trying to sell them something. And so it’s all about trying to Do as much discovery to be able to dig out that pain and be able to describe how your product or service could help with that. And so if you take it back from there, you first have to have some kind of relationship, you know, in order to put them in a situation where they will give up the information that you need in the discovery period. And then taking it back even further. And what we’ve been working on at 10 bound is like, how do you initiate that relationship? In a way, you know, in a world that’s so crazy right now as far as attention spans, but But yeah, it’s fundamentals, you’ve got to be able to dig out the pain points that they’re focused on right now and trying to solve, connect that to your product, build a relationship and then you got to be able to get in there and have them

Jeremy Weisz 9:49
initially Well, I love what you said is nothing to do with even the selling process. At that point. It’s right you know, it’s almost just how do you get attention like in Initiating relationship, forming a relationship and then figuring out if you know, discovering their pain, so that you see, do I have a solution for what your pain is? From the initiating relationship? What have you found? there are always things that people are doing what is a good way to initiate relationship without, you know, coming across? You know, I guess adding value to someone?

David Dulany 10:25
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s the million-dollar question right there, you know, because, and, and it’s interesting, because just fast-forwarding, I had always wanted to get into technology and, you know, being in the Bay Area. So when I, when I left the sales training company, I got into the tech space, and the way that they were forming their sales team and their go-to-market teams were they would have the marketing engine, you know, the inbound engine, and then they would have a layer between called sales development and they call them BDR. And SDRs and that team, which would sort of process the initial inbound marketing, into appointments, and then the go outbound and do the cold calling and things like that, they would then hand those appointments to the sales reps, so that they could spend more time, you know, honing, they’re more qualified.

Jeremy Weisz 11:21
Exactly, by the time they get to the sales reps.

David Dulany 11:24
Exactly. And so and so and, you know, just fast forward to today. That’s what we really focus on. How do you perfect that, that sales development part of the funnel, and I think that, you know, companies that are just reliant on the inbound marketing and hoping that they get enough leads, and then being able to hand those directly to the salespeople. You’re losing a big part of the potential pipeline that you could have because, you know, to your questions, You’ve got to have somebody kind of in-between they’re personalizing things for either the people who reach out or if you’re cold calling, and because that personalization is the work that it takes to have a relevant conversation with somebody. So it’s not just spam, you know, and it’s not just a generic message. It’s, I know, I get you I understand, you know, your world to some extent, and some of your pain points. And that’s why I’m reaching out instead of just, you know, essentially blanket method Billboard. Yeah, yeah, exactly.